At that moment, the Egyptian turned and glanced in their direction. Seeing the three British soldiers standing and staring at him, the man stopped and stared back, his stick raised halfway to his bag.
The English, Lynch knew, especially those in the military, had a tendency to not pay attention to the local help. They swept floors, polished boots, washed clothes, and served at the officer’s mess, and for the most part, were noticed and scrutinized with no more attention than you’d pay to a sideboard or camp stool. Which is why, he realized, no one gave a second thought to someone walking around in the dark outside of an aircraft hangar, poking at rubbish with a stick.
An aircraft hangar filled with men who’ve been locked up during the heat of the day, only coming out to take a piss.
Even in the moonlight from forty feet away, Lynch saw the Egyptian’s eyes, sharp as an eagle and locked onto his own. The moment drew out, and ever so slowly, Lynch saw the man shift his weight, his feet sliding in the sand.
“He’s gonna bloody rabbit!” Lynch shouted.
And with that, the Egyptian dropped his sack, spun around, and took off at a dead sprint. The three men glanced at each other.
“Bugger this,” Nelson said finally, “after the bastard!”
They began to chase the Egyptian, and within a hundred feet all of them realized they were in trouble. The heat of the day had sapped the strength from their bodies, and they were growing winded already, while their quarry was widening the gap between them with every stride. Although the Egyptian had appeared skinny and listless, he was clearly in better condition than he looked, and he possessed the speed and agility of the fastest street urchin.
As they left the hangars behind and began to cross the airstrip, Lynch saw ahead of the Egyptian a pair of sentries walking their patrol, rifles slung over their shoulders.
“Hey, you lot!” he shouted, waving his arms to get their attention. “Stop that blighter!”
The sentries jerked to a halt and turned, seeing the Egyptian sprinting right for them. One of them put up his hand and shouted something unintelligible, while the other began to unsling his rifle. Barely breaking his stride, the Egyptian raised and threw his stick, which sailed through the air like a javelin and stabbed into the gut of the sentry raising his rifle. The man cried out and tumbled onto his backside, the rifle flying from his hands. The other sentry, realizing the situation had just turned deadly, moved to unsling his own rifle when there was a flash of silver moonlight in the Egyptian’s hand and suddenly the second sentry cried out and fell, a dark stain spreading from his side. The Egyptian didn’t slow down, instead simply running past the two wounded Englishmen.
“Bloody Jesus - the bugger’s knifed ‘em!” Nelson puffed out as they ran.
They were approaching the other side of the airbase, closer to the city itself, and without a word they all realized that their quarry was going to get away if they didn’t push it. Redoubling their efforts, panting and gasping in the night air, the three Commandos sprinted as hard as they could, arms and legs pumping, boots throwing plumes of sand with every footfall. Slowly, they began to gain ground.
Chapter 6
Mersa Matruh Airbase
October 28Th, 2115 Hours
The Egyptian glanced behind him and saw his pursuers still hot on his trail, heard the rhythm of their breathing as they charged after him. The knife in his hand was wet with the blood of the sentry he’d slashed, and he felt the droplets on the back of his hand drying in the cool night air, the congealing blood causing his skin to tighten as the moisture evaporated.
Gahiji didn’t know how it all went so wrong, so fast. For weeks he had done as the Germans had asked; he’d worked on the British airbase, performing menial tasks and obeying to the best of his ability. But all the while, Gahiji was also watching, and more importantly, he was listening. Born of parents who had worked for Englishmen in the past, he’d been taught how to speak the language, his mother and father understanding that with the way the world seemed to be shrinking every year, speaking English was a prized skill, one that might someday earn him a place serving British or American businessmen.
When war came to Egypt, Gahiji made a series of cautious requests to certain individuals of ill repute who found him an audience with another Egyptian, a wealthy smuggler who worked for the Germans. Once the English turned the city into an armed encampment, the Germans would pay very handsomely for any information that could be brought out of the British military bases; troop movements, supply shipments, and most important of all, any concrete information about new offensives. Any guilt Gahiji might have felt about spying on the British immediately disappeared when he realized he made more in a week informing for the Germans than he earned in a month working on the British airbase.
He had been employed by the British for three months now, and although he let on that he spoke a handful of English words, the white men around him had no idea he could decipher most of their conversations. Of course, there were some words or phrases that bewildered him, or seemed to mean something other than what he thought. And some of them were easier to understand than others; the Englishmen were easy enough, but the Australians and New Zealanders were very hard to understand, and the Scottish were almost incomprehensible.
Still, he had been proud of what small tidbits of information he was able to feed the Germans. Gahiji was smart enough to know that this was only one small corner of what would continue to be a much larger war, and it wouldn’t be over anytime soon. North Africa was a vast space, an ocean of sand, and it would take the British many more months, years perhaps, before they’d be able to drive out the Germans. With the money he was saving, buried in the dirt underneath his cot, by the time the Germans could pay him no longer, he would have enough money to see his brother and sister safe through the dangerous times that were sure to come.
But first, he had to escape these three British soldiers. Gahiji didn’t understand why he’d panicked; he’d been around such men for months, and none of them had given him a second glance. He was just another skinny brown boy, doing jobs too common and menial for the whites to do themselves. But there had been something in the way the black-haired man had stared at him, an intensity to his gaze that Gahiji had felt, even at a distance and by the light of the moon. It was as if the man was weighing his soul, measuring whether he was truly as he seemed or if he was an enemy, a deceiver. None of the British had ever looked at him like that, like a lion gazing at its prey before it sprang in for the kill. Gahiji had become unnerved, had involuntarily moved as if to escape, and as soon as he’d done so the Englishman had sensed his true purpose. The only option left had been to run, to try and escape from the airbase and lose himself in the city.
Desperation drove his pace as he sought to escape his pursuers. Although he had run, he might have possibly talked his way clear, pleading shaken nerves and terror at the thought of being beaten by the English for some imagined slight. But attacking the sentries - another stupid, stupid move on his part - had sealed his fate. An innocent man might panic and run, but only a guilty man would wound or try to kill in order to escape.
Gahiji reached the other side of the airbase and darted around a building, nearly bowling over a couple of Egyptian laborers in the process. Shouting a hurried apology over his shoulder out of habit, he tucked his chin into his chest and ran as fast as his legs could piston against the sandy earth. He decided that he had only one hope for survival; he had to seek the aid of other Egyptian spies. Masud and Hamadi lived on the base itself, sharing a hovel close by. They were both older, and had helped him get employed on the base, vouching for his trustworthiness. Now, he had to rely on them for more than a job - he had to rely on them for his life.
Glancing back behind him, he saw the British had fallen behind again, but they were still close enough that they would find him, given time. Once they lost him, they would raise the alarm, and the whole British army would descend on him. Discovery would only be a matter of time. If, howev
er, the three men could be killed quickly, before they could explain the situation...then there was hope of escape in all the confusion.
Gahiji burst into Masud and Hamadi’s quarters, almost tripping on the frayed rug spread out across the dirt floor. Both men jerked awake in their bedding, throwing aside blankets and exclaiming in surprise at his rushed intrusion.
“What are you doing here? You’re supposed to be working on the other side of the airbase!” Masud hissed at him in the dark.
“Brothers, I’ve been discovered by Englishmen who were being kept hidden in one of the hangars all day. They must be special, to be so hidden, but I got too close. Three of them follow me, close upon my heels. I need help!” he explained, breathless.
Hamadi hammered his fist into his pillow. “Fool, you brought them here! Instead of betraying just yourself, you’ve betrayed all of us!”
“There is no time to blame me now!” Gahiji pleaded. “They will be here in moments. We must kill them quickly, and slip away in the madness that follows. It is the only way!”
Masud glanced at his friend, his jaw clenched. The two men nodded, and Hamadi rolled out of his bedding, then flipped the blankets back. Scrabbling in the dirt for a few moments, he pulled a leather-wrapped bundle out of the ground. He pulled a string and undid the knot holding the bundle together, then flipped it open to reveal several metallic objects that glinted in the moonlight coming in through the doorway.
“Brothers, choose your weapons.”
Chapter 7
Mersa Matruh Airbase
October 28Th, 2120 Hours
“Where’d that little blighter run off to?” Nelson gasped.
Lynch shook his head, hands on his knees, lungs working like a set of bellows to force air into his body. The three Commandos had just popped out into a street after following their quarry between two buildings, when suddenly there was no trace of him. The three men scanned the area around them, peering into the shadows around every building, into every window and doorway. They were standing between two warehouses, and the street before them opened up into an area that was clearly meant as housing for many of the Egyptian workers. Ramshackle one-room huts lined the other side of the street, extending off into the darkness in both directions.
Bowen pointed to the hovel across from where they stood. “Look, an open doorway.”
There was the familiar flash and crack of a pistol shot from inside the doorway. Reflexes immediately took over and the three Commandos hit the dirt, hands immediately drawing their pistols.
“And you two thought I was being paranoid,” Bowen said.
Nelson grunted and racked the slide of his .45 automatic. “Shut it, you git, and open fire!”
The Commandos brought up their pistols and fired off three aimed shots apiece. There was a cry from the doorway and a shot that went high, the bullet striking the building next to them ten feet above their heads. An instant later, the dark form of a body slumped out of the doorway and into the street.
“Got the bastard,” Nelson said, raising himself to one knee.
Lynch moved to rise as well, only to see the glint of moonlight off the barrel of a revolver as it poked through a window to the right of the doorway. He reached out and grabbed Nelson, pulling him to the ground just as a bullet whined overhead, passing through where Nelson had been just a moment before.
“There’s more than one!” Lynch shouted.
“Brilliant observation!” Bowen replied. “Let's get behind some cover!”
The three men scrambled back on their bellies until they had the corner of a building between them and the shack containing their adversary. Another bullet tore through the wooden siding near them, and a third soon followed.
“Two different guns,” Bowen said. “There’s two of them in there.”
Lynch nodded. “Alright now, here’s our move. Rhys, you lay down cover fire from the corner, while me and Harry break left and make a dash across the street. Once we’re out of their firing arc, we’ll take the building high and low, while you keep an eye out for a runner. What say you?”
The two other men nodded, their expressions determined. Bowen took a moment to reload his pistol; he was the only one who’d been paranoid enough to bring extra ammunition with him. When the Welshman shrugged in apology to his squadmates, Nelson merely shook his head.
“If we can’t sort out these two buggers with what we’ve got left, the Lieutenant should have us returned to our old units.”
Lynch and Nelson gathered themselves to make their run, when suddenly Lynch put out a hand. “Harry, hold on a moment.”
“Go, don’t go, make up your bloody mind!” Nelson hissed.
“These are spies, eh? We ought to take one alive, so we should,” Lynch replied.
“Bloody brilliant,” Nelson grumbled. “I’ll leave that to you. I’ll be shooting to keep meself unperforated with bullets.”
“Are you two staying or going?” Bowen asked, steadying himself at the corner of the building. No more shots had been fired for a few seconds, and that made him nervous.
Lynch and Nelson nodded to Bowen, who eased himself around the corner and immediately began firing at a deliberate pace of one shot a second. As soon as he opened fire, the other two Commandos took off at a dead sprint, crossing the street at a diagonal.
The flash of a gun muzzle lit up the window next to the hovel’s door. Bowen shifted his fire to the shooter, who ducked back away from the window as the sill splintered from the impact of one of Bowen’s bullets. Nelson and Lynch both fired a single round apiece towards the general direction of the front of the building before skidding to a stop at the building’s corner.
“Still alive?” Nelson whispered to Lynch.
“Aye, too bad for you,” he replied. “I’ll go low, you go high?”
“Typical Irishman, mucking about in the dirt,” Nelson shot back with a grin.
They crept up next to the open doorway, pistols at the ready. A body sprawled in the dirt at their feet, a dark pool of blood soaking into the ground around the man’s neck, a battered-looking .38 calibre revolver held in his limp hand. An alarm was sounding from someplace nearby, as well as shouting and whistle-blowing. There would be armed patrols descending on them at any moment, and if they were going to do this, they had to clear the hut now, before the watch arrived and asked a hundred questions from behind the muzzles of their rifles, while the spies crept away laughing. Nelson impatiently tapped Lynch on the shoulder, and moving as one, the two Commandos flowed through the door, Nelson standing high, his pistol raised to eye level, while Lynch went through the door at a low crouch.
As soon as the two men passed through the doorway, one of the gunmen fired at them. The muzzle flashes lit up the shooter; a skinny Egyptian man, older than their runner, crouching in the far corner of the hovel and blasting away with a small pistol. Nelson immediately fired two shots, both catching the man high in the chest and flipping him onto his back where he lay feebly thrashing, tangled in a pile of bedding. Nelson fired a last, single shot into the man’s head, and the Egyptian finally lay still.
Having cleared the doorway, Lynch took a step to the right, while Nelson moved to the left. Lynch’s ears were ringing after all the gunfire in such a small space, and he didn't hear the man moving to his right until he felt a body slam into him, sprawling him across the inside of the threshold. Lynch rolled, bringing his pistol around, knowing with a sense of dread that he was going to be too slow, but his attacker wasn’t trying for a shot; he jumped Lynch’s body and made to sprint through the doorway, only to catch his feet on the legs of the dead man outside the door. The Egyptian let out a cry and tumbled into the dust.
Lynch scrambled to his feet and turned towards the door, his gun at the ready, only to find the tip of a long, sharp bayonet prodding his chest. He saw the bayonet was attached to the muzzle of a Lee-Enfield rifle, and his eyes followed the length of the rifle, coming to rest on a man in Eighth Army battledress and wearing a helmet.
Chapter 8
Mersa Matruh Airbase
October 28Th, 2230 Hours
“The man’s name is Hamadi,” Abercrombie said, stepping into his office and walking to his desk, then pouring himself a glass of Scotch. “He’s been on this base since war broke out, and he’s been spying on us the entire time.”
Lynch, Nelson, and Bowen stood in Abercrombie’s office, as well as Captain Eldred, Lieutenant Price, and Sergeant McTeague. They’d been there ever since the three Commandos were released from the Eighth Army patrol who’d found them. Although two of the Egyptians were dead, the third had been taken alive, knocked momentarily senseless by the butt of a rifle. Lynch had overheard earlier that Hamadi was the first spy they’d captured alive in Mersa Matruh, and he believed Abercrombie intended to make the most of his windfall.
The Egyptian was being interrogated in a room down in the basement. Abercrombie had at his disposal a couple of hard-knuckled lads who didn’t mind roughing someone up on orders. Lynch recalled memories of being locked up in the bowels of Johann Faust’s SS headquarters in Calais, tied to a chair and beaten for hours next to the corpse of his squadmate. While Lynch didn’t have any real sympathy for Hamadi, he could all too easily imagine what the Egyptian was going through right now, and the thought gave him a cold knot in the base of his stomach.
“So, where do we go from here?” Captain Eldred asked.
Abercrombie tossed back half the contents of his tumbler in one swallow and thought for a moment, choosing his words. “Hamadi has given us a name, one Salih El Haddad. Haddad is a businessman, a merchant known for being able to acquire rare or hard to find items, if one is willing to pay the price commanded by his talents.”
Commando- The Complete World War II Action Collection Volume I Page 34